'500 Years'
HEIDI VOET Solo Exhibition
‘五百年’ 比利時當代藝術家--海蒂・芙歐特 首次台灣個展
2016.11.26-2017.01.08
HEIDI VOET Solo Exhibition
‘五百年’ 比利時當代藝術家--海蒂・芙歐特 首次台灣個展
2016.11.26-2017.01.08
Half a Millennium of Progress Carried Home
Kit Hammonds The heraldic patterns of woven flags, not immediately locatable in the world order; Tribal masks with a lurid plastic skin. Still lives of fruit sitting in a blinding light. All familiar artefacts one might find in a museum, but without the patina of age, they have a surreal air, an unsettling presentness. Museums are usually rather dark, stuffy and somber places, where their acquisitions are preserved for all time, frozen in the narrative of historical progress. Plastic bags, on the other hand, lie at the opposite end of cultural, or any other, value. Temporary containers for transient goods, they are disposed of at will on a daily basis. It is not only the bags’ themselves that we overlook, but also our own responsibility over their permanence. Each is destined to outlive us multi-fold, persisting in the environment for half a millennium, or thereabouts. Heidi Voet’s exhibition 500 years brings these two distinct containers, in a ludic turn transforms the mutable plastic bag, a “vessel for an ever-changing content”, into the carrier of history. Cast backwards, the life of a plastic bag defines a period of significant transformations that have shaped the present. Voet employs them as a medium through which to consider the incongruities a globalized, contemporary world carries with it. Woven out of thousands of polyethylene bags, the flags in A Young Man in a Young Man’s World each represent a nation that once asserted independence only to have met dissolution. The ever-changing geo-political landscape plays out on the slower geological time of the land. Therefore any country, new or old, is to some extent an arbitrary container, despite being a predominant factor in a sense of identity. The plastic bags, meanwhile, tend not to respect such borders and divisions, bringing with it displaced ecological problems. Their use here becomes a material metaphor for one of the most significant forces that divided the world and partitioned cultures over the past five centuries of “progress”, colonialism. In Oh No, Not Me thousands more of these plastic bags are used to recreate masks based on ethnographic artefacts in European museums. Masks such as these are commonly ritualistic, and so carry values beyond their material form as social objects. Like the flags they bind people together through tradition and rites of passage that connect to a sense of home and kinship, in their own context that is. As museum pieces, however, they are displayed outside of time and place, representing a “primitive” time and a cultural “other”. Frequently they made their way to Europe by being torn away from their own cultures by missionaries and colonialists as trophies that demonstrated the dominance of modernity. And while the ethical questions that this raises are apparent today, there is still a tendency to turn away from its deeper historical implications that might undermine a Western centrism that persists. As Sieglinde Lemke brings to light: “the collective self-fashioning of a modern identity was predicated on a break with Victorian moral conventions and aesthetic values. However… the negation of the received genteel code of nineteenth-century culture was sometimes concomitant with an embrace of that which their predecessors most despised —‘the primitive.’”[1] It is, somewhat ironically, in the mask’s supports that Voet brings her own light to bear on this destabilised cultural identity. Sections of a reconstructed, and then deconstructed, modern Rietveld chair is used as the raw material for the display stands. Rooted in its own particular lineage of radical, rational modernism, the design now lies out of copyright and available for appropriation today. John Rajchman writes the contemporary “involves a time (and sense of time) that complicates or undoes the grand divisions between modernity and tradition in terms of which European thought, and art, was so pleased to define itself.”[2] Voet’s remade flags and masks address the inherent contradictions that attempts to reconcile these grand divisions that not only played out in thought and art, but in other aspects of a globalized world in which the threads of colonialism may still be traced. Paradoxically weaving becomes an act of undoing, unmasking, or unclothing. In Peer Pressure, a series of photographs of fruit which have exchanged their skins, continues this chain of associations. Once a seasonal, local product, global trade saw different varieties transported and sold over continental distances. Exotic fruits such as pineapples were such oddities in Europe even as late as the 19th century they were displayed as curios and status symbols at dinner parties rather than eaten. Today supermarket shelves, and the carrier bags, are filled with non-native fruits that are often grown in equally alien environments. As photographs they fall close to a particular tradition of still-life painting, that has special relevance. The still-lives of Flemish painting during the Dutch Golden Age, its empire built on trade, included in their details allusions to decay. Flies, mould, and other ‘memento mori’, or allegories for mortality. The dark interiors in which these historic still lives were set is transposed in Peer Pressure into the contemporary bright, sterile white light that pervades the contemporary gallery, supermarket or operating theatre. Placing Voet’s fruit in a network of associations to cultures of material, commodity and even the plastic surgery, in which identity is constructed. Just as national flags clothe identity in one sense, and masks act as social skins, in another, the skins of fruits confound their identity, while, perhaps seeking to identify with their peers to which the title playfully alludes. We might find further analogies in Marc Augé’s description that “it is only now, in the rather blinding light of a generalized situation of cultural circulation, that we can become aware of what the eruption of the outside world into their societies has meant for certain peoples.” [3] Here lies the heart of Voet’s project to address today’s quandaries in identifying both the self and other as coeval, that is as equal in time. “Globalization, not just as an economic phenomenon, but also as the generalized sharing of time, as the growing contemporanization of diversity”, as Pedro Erber puts it, “brings with it the germ of a thorough questioning of the very cultural and historical identity of the West.”[4] The myriad connections that have emerged between peoples can, therefore, only be addressed in the unpicking some of the foundations on which the objects that represent, mediate and even nourish us might be inherently contradictory. The quandaries this presents are the warp of Heidi Voet’s work in 500 years, the high density polyethylene bags the weft that binds them together. The struggle to connect or construct a shared sense of time and place is acutely articulated in Voet’s work with ludic sensibilities, that carries cultural legacies home. [1] Sieglinde Lemke, Primitivist Modernism: Black Culture and the Origins of Transatlantic Modernism, Oxford University Press, 1998. P146 [2] John Rajchman, “The Contemporary, A New Idea?” in Aesthetics and Contemporary Art, Sternberg, 2011. p126 [3] Marc Augé, An Anthropology for Contemporaneous Worlds, Stanford Press, 1999. p50 [4] Pedro Erber, “Contemporaneity and its Discontents” in Diacritics, John Hopkins University Press, 2013. P36 五百年進步的清楚呈現 基特・哈默斯 帶有紋飾圖騰的編織旗幟,卻無法立即辨識它們在世界秩序中的位置、火紅塑膠皮做成的部落面具、刺眼燈光下的水果靜物畫。這些都是博物館中常看到的熟悉文物,但卻沒有歲月帶來的古色古香,反而流露出一股超現實氣味、一種令人不安的存在。 博物館通常令人聯想到陰暗、通風不良又昏沉的場所,它們的收藏品被永久保存,凍結於歷史演進的敘事之中。相反的,塑膠袋則位於文化等等的價值系統的另一個極端。它們短暫包裝著物品,每日都被隨意丟棄。而我們除了忽視塑膠袋本身,我們也忽略了對於「塑膠袋將永久存在」所應負起的責任。每一個塑膠袋擁有的壽命都比人類還長上許多,可在環境中待上約五百年之久。海蒂.芙歐特的展覽《五百年》聯結了博物館和塑膠袋這二種不同的容器,運用趣味的的轉折手法,將塑膠袋這個高可塑性且「內容物持續更替的容器」,轉化為歷史的載體。回顧過去,塑膠袋的壽命標定了一系列重大的變化,而這些變化一再形塑了我們的現在。透過關照這些變化,芙歐特試圖探索這個充斥塑膠袋的全球化當代世界其中的,種種斷裂。 在《年輕人世界中的一名年輕人》(A young man in a young man’s world)系列中的旗幟,是以數千個聚乙烯袋子編織而成的。每一面旗幟都代表了曾經主張獨立卻已不復存在的國家。不斷演變的地緣政治地景,對比著土地以及其較緩慢的地質時間。任何一個國家,無論新舊,即使就身分認同而言是一個重要的因素,但在某個程度上皆可視為一個任意隨性的容器。而塑膠袋,無視彊界和區域,帶來了不分地域的生態問題。塑膠袋的使用,在此亦成為一種具有物質性的譬喻。代表了過去五百年的「進步」中,分裂世界、分隔文化的一股強大力量,也就是殖民主義。 而在《喔,不,不是我》(Oh no, not me)系列中,藝術家再度以數千個塑膠袋,再製了歐洲當地博物館中具人種誌色彩的文物。這類的面具一般多用於儀式場合,因此帶有超越物質的價值,進而被視為具有社交性質的物件。一如上述的旗幟,在這些面具原有的文化脈絡中,它們透過傳統及祭儀凝聚人心,連結對家庭與親族的歸屬感。然而在博物館中,它們脫離了原有時空,成了再現「原始」時代及文化「他者」的展品。大多時候,它們被傳教士和殖民主義者當做戰利品,從原有的文化中剝離而被運到了歐洲,以展示現代文明的優越性。雖然今時今日,儘管其中的道德問題已顯而易見,人們卻似乎傾向迴避其更深層的歷史意涵,免得危害到一直持續存在的西方中心主義。一如 Lemke 揭示的:「集體地自我形塑所謂的「現代身分」,取決於脫離維多利亞時代的道德傳統及美學價值。然而 … 否定了十九世紀文化中的禮儀規範標準,有時卻混合了擁抱前人過去最為鄙視的『原始』。」[1] 透過帶有諷刺意味的面具支架,芙歐特也對於這個崩解的文化認同提出自己的詮釋。部份被重組又再解構的瑞特威爾德現代設計坐椅,成了製作展示架的原始材料。這個原本代表激進、理性現代主義傳統的設計,現在已不受版權保障,而可被自由挪用。 John Rajchman寫道:當代一詞「涉及了一種時間(以及時間感),它可以複雜化或是消弭現代性和傳統之間的巨大差異。就這點來說,歐陸思想,以及藝術,對於它們是可以持續定義自己的這點可是非常開心。」[2] 芙歐特再製的旗幟和面具,探討調和這種巨大差異的企圖中所隱藏的內在矛盾。這類內在矛盾不僅出現於思想及藝術中,也可見於全球化世界的其它面向。而這個全球化的世界,依然能察覺殖民主義的痕跡。諷刺的是,編織的動作在此成了消弭、揭露(假面具)、呈現赤裸面的行為。 延續著同一路的聯想模式,在《同儕壓力》(Peer Pressure)系列中,攝影作品中的水果紛紛交換了外皮。它們曾是季節性、地區性的物產,全球貿易卻將不同的品種輸運、販售至不同大陸。像鳯梨這樣帶有異國風味的水果,直至十九世紀在歐洲仍被當成珍稀奇物及身份象徵,展示於晚宴之中,而非被當成食物。時至今日,超市架上、購物袋中卻已充斥非產自當地、生產於異地環境的水果。 這一系列攝影作品近似於一種獨特的靜物畫傳統,這一點有其特殊的重要性。荷蘭黃金時代的帝國命脈立基於貿易活動。當時的法蘭德斯派靜物畫亦常在繪畫細節中暗示著腐敗。像是蒼蠅、黴菌和其他的「死亡的警告」(memento mori);這些關於死亡的象徵。這類歷史靜物畫常用的黑暗背影,在《同儕壓力》系列中化為當代明亮、毫無生氣的白熾光線,像是在當代藝廊、超級市場或醫院開刀房中看到的那樣。將芙歐特的水果攝影置於這樣巨大的聯想網絡之中,便連結了不同的物質文化、商品文化,甚至是關乎身分建構的整形手術。就如國旗包覆了身分的認同,面具做為一種社交性的皮層,水果的外皮在確立其身分的同時,可能也正如作品名稱所幽默地提點的:水果也正在尋求同儕的認同。我們在 Marc Augé 的描述中,看到了更進一步的比喻:「只有到現在,在文化交流中單一化的刺眼盲目光芒下,我們才能意識到,對某些人來說,外在世界的爆發對其所在社會的意義是什麼。」[3] 芙歐特的創作核心便是針對這樣一個今日的難題,即對自我和他者產生同時代的認同,也就是二者在時間中是平等的。「全球化不單單只是經濟現象,同時也是時間的分享的單一化,也是愈發可見的多樣性的當代化,」Erber 如此描述。「隨之一同發生的,是對西方自身文化和歷史身分的全面質疑。」[4] 因此,要探討人與人之間產生的各類連結,只能透過揭露這些代表著我們、為我們居中協調,甚或滋養了我們的物件,其根基有著哪些本質上可能的矛盾。 這裡所揭示的難題,正是芙歐特在《五百年》展出作品編織的經線,而她以高密度的聚乙烯袋子為緯線,將這些難題串連在一起。透過趣味幽默的感性力量,芙歐特的作品敏銳地道出了要連結、建構一種共享的時空感受時所面臨的掙扎,更將過去的文化遺產做了清楚的呈現。 [1] Sieglinde Lemke, Primitivist Modernism: Black Culture and the Origins of Transatlantic Modernism, Oxford University Press, 1998. P146 [2] John Rajchman, “The Contemporary, A New Idea?” in Aesthetics and Contemporary Art, Sternberg, 2011. p126 [3] Marc Augé, An Anthropology for Contemporaneous Worlds, Stanford Press, 1999. p50 [4] Pedro Erber, “Contemporaneity and its Discontents” in Diacritics, John Hopkins University Press, 2013. P36 |